For centuries, miners have used small birds to detect the presence of toxic gases. The resulting phrase, “miner’s canary”, indicates a living creature used as a warning sensor. The term is being used a lot these days, as the warming planet changes the habits and the migration patterns of wild birds.

Without coats, wood stoves or indoor cooking, these little critters notice weather trends much more than humans.

I suspected that birds were adjusting to climate changes we may not know about. To look into this, I talked with Ron LeValley, a local photographer and biologist who has been observing wildlife for years. His impression is a lengthened breeding season has produced more cormorants and murre chicks in the rocks off the Mendocino Headlands. He’s seen evidence of the Great Tailed Grackle moving north into our territory. From inland, he’s seen many more scrub jays and spotted towhees moving towards the Coast. Ron has seen more ravens and less robins, more band-tailed pigeons and less black- and- orange varied thrushes than previously. An increase in the Purple Velvet Grass has caused his allergies to flare up. The blooming of the species seems to be happening later in the season so that now he’s sneezing in July!

As for fish, Ron noticed the collapse of the short-billed rockfish offshore during the 1970’s and their apparent beginning of their recovery in recent years. The gradual increase in winds has caused increased upwelling just offshore which brings up cold nutrient-rich water to the surface. This helps create our fog and serves as a smorgasbord for the fish.

Among a few other birds he thinks are being found further north is the Brown Booby which was once rare even off Baja California and is now nesting on the Coronado Islands just south of San Diego. The Audubon Society’s boat trip last spring spotted one, probably the first documented record for Mendocino County even though two were seen together in Humboldt County a few years ago. Of major interest to birdwatchers is a Northern Gannet that has been on the Farallon Islands for a year now. This is an Atlantic species, so it must have it wandered across the mostly ice free Arctic Ocean last summer. One was seen in the Bering Sea about a month before the bird showed up on the Farallones. A Gray Whale went the other way last year and was seen and tagged in Israel!. Now that the Northwest Passage is becoming ice free for a significant portion of the summer, Ron expects that more of this will happen.

Birds aren’t the only life form that may change habits from global warming. Since birds eat insects, the insects are probably changing their habitat as well. Are mosquitoes becoming more of a problem? Might any of the avid gardeners see more or less of some critical insect? One local resident, Mitch Clogg, thinks the Lyme-disease carrying wood tick likes it along a slightly warmer Coast and so has become more frequent here. Anyone who works in the woods might find this trend worrisome.

Looking for local signs of global changes requires a good observation of what is normal.

Changes are “slow” or “fast” compared to human time steps. We can recognize changes in “El Nino” faster, a 4-8 year cycle, than we can sense the more gradual change from decades of global warming.

To use birds as miner’s canaries, we’ll have to hear from more long-time coastal residents who’ve are aware of bird habits for at least a decade or more. Reader, I’d love to hear your story for future articles. You can send them to me at BeaconScience@mcn.org.

Who could have guessed that we’d be learning from the birds? Sure, we learned from the passenger pigeon but what a terrible cost. Observing the birds reminds us that we are all in this together!

Dr. Walt McKeown is a local scientist who also writes columns for the Mendocino Beacon.